The Instance Group in the Scarlet Monastery

With WoW Classic so far it has been my practice, at the end of a dungeon run post, to link to past runs of the same instance in various eras of WoW.  With Scarlet Monastery though, that was a little different.  To start with, it has four wings, so I felt I had to wait until I knew we were through there in order to inject those links.

Also, in looking back, I found that some of the posts had issues.  Early on in the history of the blog I hit a point where I was using up my image upload space more rapidly that I expected, so for a brief bit I went looking for alternatives to direct uploads to WordPress.com.

For whatever reason, I chose ImageShack.

I don’t know why.  It was sort of the Imgur of its time I guess.  I am sure it seemed like a reasonable choice when I made.

Back in 2007 they allowed free upload accounts.  Since then they have gone paid subscription only and it seems that they purged all the free accounts, so a range of old posts just have broken image icons where screen shots should have been.  Given how parsimonious I was with images at that point in the life of the blog, I felt I had better fix that.  Fortunately, I throw nothing away and had the screen shots from that era archived, so you can experience those posts in full color.

Also, we didn’t do an instance this past weekend, so at least I have something to post.

Vanilla Era

Basically, real “back in the day” stuff.

• Scarlet Monastery – Round 1 – Dec 12, 2006
• Scarlet Monastery – Round 2 – Dec 18, 2006
• Scarlet Monastery – Rounds 3 through 7 – Jan 6, 2007
• Scarlet Monastery – Round 8 – Jan 13, 2007
• Scarlet Monastery – Rounds 9 and 10 – Jan 15, 2007

While not as primitive as some of my earlier instance run posts, I had clearly yet to establish a regular pattern of posting after every run.  Also, I think over the holidays we were running a couple times a week… I seem to recall a series of Thursday and Saturday runs.  It was a different time.

What is interesting is how parallel the experiences were to more recent posts.  We hit things at about the same level.  We were doing it as groups of five most of the time, though there were some short groups in there.  We did the the “In the Name of the Light” quest.  Arcanist Doan was just as generous with the Illusionary Rod back then as he was recently.

I even distinctly mention how easy it was to avoid Herod’s spin attack in the armory, making me wonder if SynCaine’s theory about modern performance levels making things easier is as straightforward as I might have seemed at first glance. (Ula took a poke at that idea on her blog as well.)  Maybe this stuff was never really that hard and we were not as bad as I recall.

Celebrating in the Cathedral back in 2007

Pre-Cataclysm

After we wrapped the initial instances in Wrath of the Lich King we decided to re-roll the group in as different a way as possible, so we went Horde and did so on an RP-PvP server.  We did go back to our old characters now and again, but we were focused on the new group a lot.

• Making Merry – Dec 24, 2009
• Under Age in the Scarlet Monastery – Jan 7, 2010

The first post is the original characters going back to the monastery to get Santa hats.  It is the second post that gives a sense about how things had changed.  We showed up with a level 32 group and pressed through to do the graveyard, library, and the armory in one evening.

Granted, this was after the instance levels had been re-factored.  Herod, for example, was level 37 there, as opposed to being the level 40 boss we fought recently.  But still, we managed it, though we passed on the cathedral I guess.

Victory in the Armory

Interestingly, while I do not mention respawn rates in the vanilla era, the fast respawn of the armory comes up in that post.  We wiped on the way out then as well.

Post-Cataclysm

With the coming of the Cataclysm expansion we re-rolled again, this time going with four worgen and a gnome.  Ula only plays gnomes.

• Traveling to the Scarlet Monastery – Mar 10, 2011

With a group of four level 30s we decide to eschew the Dungeon Finder and run to Scarlet Monastery.   We finish the library, slaying Doan successfully.  Sure, we wiped a few times, but we were a group of four level 30s FFS.

At the end of the library

You can see that the Illusionary Rod dropped again.  I think it must always drop.

We were not too far from disillusionment with Cataclysm at that point, though for us re-rolling was the wrong play.  If we had gone back to WotLK and finished off the instances they added after the group took a break (though Earl and I kept playing the whole expansion) and had then gone into the Cataclysm instances, we would have been better disposed to the expansion.

The Neverwinter Heresy

Adrift after growing tired of Cataclysm, we tried other MMOs.  There was the horrible EverQuest II experiment, some time spent in LOTRO after it went free to play, and a diversion into Neverwinter.  There we found that somebody had used the dungeon creation tools to create approximations of several World of Warcraft instances, including the Scarlet Monastery.

I might have forgotten about that, except for the fact that I tagged the post “Scarlet Monastery,” so it is on the canon list.

• The Dreadmines and the Scarlet Something or Other – Sep 26, 2013

We went through two Scarlet Monastery recreations, one of the library and the other of the cathedral.

It does have that Scarlet Monastery vibe to it I guess

They were pretty impressive, given the tools.  There was also an attempt at the Deadmines, which was less convincing.

Hallow’s End

We ran out and did the graveyard quite a few times as part of the Hallow’s End celebration, so one could technically count that as a visit to the Scarlet Monastery.  Way back in the day you actually had to run there.  However, I didn’t tag these with “Scarlet Monastery,” but I did find a couple pre-Dungeon Finder run to include just for flavor.

• Hunting the Headless Horseman – Nov 6, 2008
• The Ringless Horseman – Nov 5, 2009

The 2008 post was just a week before Wrath of the Lich King hit, while the 2009 post was just about a month before patch 3.3.0 hit, bringing with it the Dungeon Finder interface, which made running the Headless Horseman a lot more routine.

Headless Horseman Down in Flames

WoW Classic

That brings us to the more recent adventures.

• Six for the Scarlet Monastery Graveyard – Dec 3, 2019
• Arcanist Doan, in the Library, with the Illusionary Rod – Dec 24, 2019
• The Library and the Armory – Jan 15, 2020
• The Armory and the Library – Jan 28, 2020
• Scarlet Monastery Cathedral – Feb 4, 2020

There is a gap between the graveyard and the other wings largely because we went back and did Gnomer again.  Twice.  Go figure.

At the upper fountain last week

There was also a substantial change in the group. Obama has officially dropped out, so he won’t be playing with us any more, and Earl hasn’t been able to get on to play, leaving us with the current group of four.  Still, we persist.

Three Stops in Scarlet Monastery

Saturday one again saw the group together and we were going to take one more run at Scarlet Monastery.  As I mentioned last week, I wanted to finish up the quest In the Name of the Light as it offered up a serious weapon upgrade for me.  The rest of the group was good for that as well, so as we set out we had this line up:

• Viniki – level 38 gnome warrior
• Ula – level 38 gnome mage
• Skronk – level 37 dwarf priest
• Moronae – level 38 night elf druid

The first thing we had to do was to get everybody on the quest together, and that meant speaking to Brother Anton out in Desolace.

Brother Anton hanging out at the inn

We had gotten ourselves pre-positioned nearby, so getting to Desolace wasn’t an issue.  Viniki had even already done this stage, so I got out Wilhelm, my pally, to run along and get the quest under his belt.

The quest is simple.  Brother Anton just wants you to kill some undead.  He is from the Scarlet Crusade after all, and their stated purpose is the eradication of undead on Azeroth.  The undead in question… thirty of them… are a bit of a ways off.  You basically have to run the length of Desolace, north to south and back, which itself is well stocked with hostile creatures wandering about.

Running the length of Desolace

And Desolace is not a small zone.  It isn’t as big as The Barrens, but it is a lot bigger than Westfall.  So we headed off.

We just need to get to that arch

The zone also has such a muddy color palette that one might mistakenly believe they had accidentally run into EverQuest II Classic.  But we made it without too many entanglements along the way.

The slaying of the ravagers starter off well enough.  We got in the first ten pretty quickly.

Smiting a ravager

But then somebody else showed up to hunt them, and then a third party joined in as well.  The problem with this quest is that even with a full, untouched spawn, there are not 30 ravagers to be slain.  If you have the place to yourself you end up having to wait for respawns.  And when you have other people around it becomes a race to see who can tag ravagers first.  Fortunately for us bringing along a paladin had benefits.  Wilhelm has track undead, so we could spot spawns at a distance, and the one ranged pally spell, exorcism, only works on undead and demons, so he could actually tag things without having to run all the way up to them and shake their hand.

So it took a bit, but we eventually got them, then trotted back across the length of the zone to report back to Brother Anton.

He, in turn, sends us off to speak to Raleigh the Devote, who resides in Southshore.  Anton promised that Raleigh would, “escort you to a place of honor in our Scarlet Monastery” when we met up with him.  But Raleigh wasn’t so receptive.

Raleigh reacts badly

Raleigh has become disillusioned with the Scarlet Crusade, feeling that its once noble mission had gone astray.

The problem

His solution was to decapitate the leadership.  We had to go slay:

• Houndmaster Loksey (Library)
• Herod (Armory)
• High Inquisitor Whitemane (Cathedral)
• Scarlet Commander Mograine (Cathedral)

Of course, we had slain all four of these bosses before, so we were back for an encore run, hitting three wings in one run.

We ran out to the Scarlet Monastery again, taking the path from Southshore, and arriving without any particular issues for once.  There we went straight into the library to find Houndmaster Loksey.

He is not too far into that instance, so we could zip in, clear just a few groups, then grab him.

Markers of the Loksey fight

Arcanist Doan was not on Raleigh’s list, so we were able to slip right back out of the instance and on to the armory.

This was our third run into the armory, so we had the path in down pretty well.  We moved at a pace though the trash.

Cutting down the scarlets

It did not take us too long to get to Herod.

Herod awaits once more

Having done the fight already, we were able to run through it pretty quickly.  Herod spins, we run, Herod stops, we slay.  He was soon down and the trainee chorus line with him.

All clear again

Herod was nice enough to drop Herod’s Should, the mail shoulder piece, which was a nice addition to my kit.

We did not, however, linger long.  My plan was to get back out of the instance as fast as possible.  Skronk suggested we could just “tele-mort,” wipe and run back, but I wanted to get out alive.  With the quick spawn rate of the armory, my hope was that we could bypass most of the trash and maybe just fight a few groups as we got close to the exit.

Running for the exit

Eventually we hit a group, just before the stairway to the archery range.

The armory layout

It was just a group of three though, so no big deal.  We killed them going in, we would kill them going out.  However, not thinking, I grabbed this group around the corner from where they spawned, which happened to be very close to where the next group of three spawned less than a minute later when we were in the midst of the fight.

A trio of adds

At that point we were toast.  It didn’t help that the walked that patrols this section also wandered in.  I think we also proximity pulled the group behind us that spawned as well.  It was not going well, so the decision was to run for it to see if anybody could get out.  Nobody did, but you can see all the mobs running back past my corpse after they finally got Ula.

Trash returning to their spots

So we ended up with the tele-mort option after all.

That left us lined up for the cathedral.  We did that last week, but it wasn’t a cake walk.  However, having done it we were better prepared as to how we should approach it.  Also, we were very careful not to get too close to Morgaine.

As with the previous run, we cleared a path first to the lower fountain, then the upper fountain.  At the upper fountain we picked off the mobs on the front lawn from left to right, then took the guardians of the door.

Once the cathedral doors were open the careful pulls really began.  We were not fooled by the mobs just inside the doors and off to either side.  We move from group to group with deliberate care, keeping the fights manageable and not letting anybody run off.

Not too far into that Viniki hit level 39.  That would make him all the more effective against the final boss.  However, I was also facing a problem.  I had forgotten to repair my armor after last week… and another couple of deaths during the week… so as we were moving on I got the paper doll warning for my sword and pants.

Never a good sign

My sword was especially light on durability, and would clearly go red if I kept using it.

On the plus side, I had an alternate weapon in my bag, the Hand of Righteousness, which dropped off of Morgaine last week.  It required level 39, so it just opened up as an option right then.  In addition to durability, it gave me a boost from 21 to 29 dps when it came to my weapon.

It is also pretty nice looking

The flip side of that was Viniki hadn’t used a one-handed mace for a while, so while the cap for weapon skills at level 39 is 195, Viniki’s mace skill was 65.  He was not going to be hitting anything for much damage until that worked up.  I warned the group about the issue, then took hold of the mace and pulled the next mob.

As expected, I had some trouble holding aggro for a while as I wiffed swing after swing.  But for a long stretch there was a skill up with every swing.  Soon I was reliably hitting for 1 damage.  Fortunately I was able to use my taunt and a few other skills to keep the mobs from running completely amok on the casters.

We kept going, clearing the left side of the altar first, then going to the right, swinging wide around the pillars to keep clear of Morgaine.  On the right side we cleared then went to grab High Inquisitor Fairbanks again.

It is weird that he is just laying there looking dead

The Icy Veins guide says he is skippable, which is true enough, and does get skipped because he doesn’t drop blue gear.  But he is an easy fight and last time he dropped the Inquisitor’s Shawl, which was an upgrade for Skronk.  This time he dropped the Dusty Mail Boots, which were an upgrade for Viniki.  Worth the time yet again.

After that we went back to the main hall for the final fight.

There is Morgaine

Again, having done it last week we were much better prepared.  Last time there was a some tension as we got to the end of the fight as Skronk ran low on mana and my health ebbed.

This time however it played out like a sure thing.  I re-equipped my sword to be sure I was hitting consistently and we kicked things off.  Morgaine went down, Whitemane revived him, we slew Whitemane, then finished off Morgaine again without the issue being at all in doubt.

Finishing up Morgaine

So the question became, “What did they drop?”

Last week Morgaine dropped the Scarlet Leggings.  This time around he gave us the Morgaine’s Might, the two handed mace.  I was really hoping for his shield, which would have been a major upgrade for me.  Nobody really wanted/needed the mace, so we rolled off for who would get to vendor it.

And then there was Whitemane.  Last week it was the Hand of Righteousness, which I had been using for a bit.  But the big item from her is Whitemane’s Chapeau.  And when we checked the corpse, there it was.  Skronk had been pining for that hat and, in my brain, it was healer gear.  But on looking at the stats, it was really good for any cloth wearing caster.

Whitemane’s Chapeau

So Ula and Skronk had to roll off for it.  Ula won.

She has a post with a video about her new hat over at her blog.

But Whitemane’s Chapeau requires level 39 and she was half a bubble shy.  So we went back out to the fountain area and picked off mobs until she leveled up.  Then we ran over to take a proper screen shot out in front of the upper fountain.

At the fountain for the picture

Then it was time to recall to Ironforge.  But we were not done yet.  We had to fly back to Southshore to turn in the quest to Raleigh.  I was happy to get my new sword.

For those not so inclined, there was another weapon that vendored for over two gold, which at our level of poverty is not something to be sneered at.  And the experience for the quest was decent as well.  It pushed Moronae over the top to 39 and Skronk ended up not too far from that level as well, having hit 38 earlier in the run.

With that I think we might be done with Scarlet Monastery.  I believe Razorfen Downs is next on the list.  At least that is where we went next back in the day.

Scarlet Monastery Cathedral

We got together on Saturday night and the question was, “Where should we go?”

I had suggested last week that perhaps we ought to take another week off to go level up a bit rather than jump straight into the cathedral in Scarlet Monastery.  The three bosses there are all level 42, which seemed a bit steep, especially for a group of just four.  I figured we might need to be level 38 to ensure some chance of success.  I even came up with a couple of options for places we might go level.  So when we logged on this was the group:

• Viniki – level 37 gnome warrior
• Ula – level 36 gnome mage
• Skronk – level 37 dwarf priest
• Moronae – level 36 night elf druid

But by the time we had logged on I had changed my mind.  I figured why not just give it a try.  If nothing else we would get some decent experience clearing out the instance.  And if it didn’t work out we could always go slay Herod in the armory again.

I also had a bit of an additional motive.  I have managed to find one more Scarlet Monastery quest, In The Name of the Light, and the reward options include a serious upgrade for Viniki.  But to finish it you need to kill Loksey in the library (easy) and Herod in the armory (not so easy), along with the two big bosses in the cathedral (hard)

As nobody else had an alternative plan we all headed back up to Southshore, our now usual jumping off point for the Scarlet Monastery.

Hanging out in Southshore

From there I had another brilliant idea.  It had been mentioned that the Chillwind Point flight point was the closest Alliance flight point to the Scarlet Monastery, so I thought maybe we ought to go grab that on the way and see how the path from there looked.  I had gotten the flight point a while back, but had been slaughtered by the mobs on the way to Tirisfal Glades.  But I was level 30 then.  I figured we might have leveled up enough to get through.

Confident I knew where  I was going, I led us off to a path through the mountains and into… the Hinterlands.

I don’t think this is the place

We were there, so we grabbed the flight path for later.  We will need to go back there for the Mallet of Zul’Furrak if nothing else.  Then we flew back to Southshore where I consulted a map and realized that we needed to go up the river.

On the second try I was successful.  We arrived in the Western Plaguelands and got the flight point.

Chillwind Point vicinity

From there it was just a short run to Tirisfal Glades.  We ran off down the road, south of the lake, only swimming across to the north bank.  From there the Bulwark and Tirisfal Glades were practically in sight.

Just a simple path to Tirisfal Glades

Unfortunately, a bear who showed only a level “skull” to us had different ideas.  As did the second bear and a spider.

We almost made it.  In fact, I did make it, though it was a near run thing when trying to get past the Bulwark Ula and I fell into a pit that was hemmed in by the wall, a tree, and some spikes.  I was able to hop my way out and run for it, but the spider got Ula.

So close to the destination

Everybody else released and ran back to their corpses and we met up on the “safe” side of the Bulwark to heal up, rebuff, and generally get ourselves sorted out.

Camping by the Bulwark

From there we ran north to the Scarlet Monastery, though we only made it about 20 feet before I ran us into a deathguard and we once again had to run for our lives.  We all survived this time.

At the monastery itself things were busy.  People were out playing on a Saturday night so we were able to wander though the opening areas to the cathedral door without the usual entanglements.

Inside, we were soon into the thick of things.  The cathedral is not a big instance.

Scarlet Monastery map

It is, however, densely populated once you get past the opening hallway.  I seemed to recall from back in the day that fighting from the fountain was a good plan.  I may have run up into the fountain prematurely, but we found off the extra add and setup a base there to clear up the left side.  The left side was also part of the vague memories from the group.

In the lower fountain

From there it was clearing to the steps to get into the upper fountain.

The upper fountain

The strip of grass between the upper fountain and the cathedral doors was populated mostly by casters.  That meant pulling them back into the fountain, which I mostly accomplished by tagging them with the gun and then running back and jumping down into the stairway to break line of site.  That seemed to work pretty well and we were soon opening the doors.  Moronae hit 37 in the fountain, so we were all the same level.

If the outer fountain area is crowded, the cathedral itself is packed.  We stood there at the open doors, Skronk marking the four mobs in the first row when we managed to proximity pull a pair of walkers around the corner.  Skronk switched the markers and we were on to our clearing.

Not the pair we thought we would get

There are three rows in the center and then a series of walkers and bystanders in the aisles on the outside of the pillars.  Some slow and steady work managed to clear the mobs group by group.  We didn’t even get many accidental adds.  Along the way I hit level 38, putting at least myself in the level range I thought we needed to be in.

We managed to clear the main area and had moved off to the left side to clear out the group there.  That went well enough.  We were wondering whether we needed to clear the side rooms or not when I said we ought to take care of the group on the other side.  This led to our first wipe.

I ran over to the other side, steering wide of Morgaine, who is standing up on the altar.  However, the rest of the group didn’t come with me and only saw me over on the other side, so ran straight  to me.

Paths traveled

They proximity pulled Morgaine and things fell apart pretty quickly.  But in doing that we did get the answer to the question of whether or not we needed to clear the mobs in the side rooms.  When you engage Morgaine all of the remaining Scarlet Crusade mobs in the cathedral run to assist him.  We would need to clear.

We ran back to the instance and revived inside.  Fortunately the respawn time for the cathedral is much longer than the other wings.  We had been at it for over an hour and nothing new had respawned.  We were able to get back into the cathedral to carry on.

Back into the cathedral

We went back over to the left to clear the rooms and ended up with a runner from one room pulling the second room and the wheels came off again and we wiped.  Back to the entrance to get ourselves put together again.

Another post-wipe picnic

We went back to the left side and, this time, managed to clear without incident.  Then we ran over to the right side, giving Morgaine a wide berth this time, and knocked out the group over there and the singleton in the back room.

Then it was time to pull the torch to pick up the minor boss.

That torch, which opens the secret door

The Icy Veins guide says that High Inquisitor Fairbanks is skippable because he doesn’t drop anything cool, but we don’t skip anything as a group.  He wasn’t too tough of a fight really.  And he starts out asleep or dead or whatever on the floor so you can get all grouped up around him before you start in.

He looks about the same after as he did before the fight

And, while he doesn’t drop anything blue, he did drop the Inquisitor’s Shawl, which was an upgrade for Skronk (he has them on in the pic above) so it was easily worth the effort.

That left us with most everything cleared in the cathedral.  We cleared up a couple of walkers, because while the zone doesn’t respawn quickly like the other instances, it does spawn random patrols now and again, and then sat down to prep for Scarlet Commander Mograine.

You can see we were still keeping our distance

Given the fight was above our level I went and took a quick look at how the fight was supposed to play out.  I mostly remembered it, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to refresh that memory.  The simple order of events is:

• Fight and slay Scarlet Commander Mograine
• High Inquisitor Whitemane shows up and revives Morgaine
• Fight them both, kill Whitemane first, then Morgaine

So we got ourselves as prepped as we could and then got stuck in with Morgaine.  He hits hard and I was putting up damage mitigation skills as often as they were ready, worried about keeping going as I was.  However we got through Morgaine well enough and he went down.  Then Whitemane walked in from the back room.

Announcing her arrival

She came out and stood next to the altar and we watched her, waiting for her to revive Morgaine.  A few seconds passed and nothing happened.  Finally I decided to take a poke at her, and when that seemed effective, we opened up on her.  In glancing through the how the fight runs, I missed the part where you have to get her down to half health or so before she brings back Morgaine.

Silly us.  I wonder how long we all might have sat there waiting.

So we beat Whitemane down, she revived Morgaine, and then we carried on with Whitemane, dropping her fairly quickly.

At that point, with the death of Whitemane, Ula hit level 38, which meant she got a full refill on health and mana.  That was nice timing, though it might have been a bit better for us if Skronk had been the one to level up.  We still had Morgaine on us and he was beating on me hard and I had already thrown up shield wall and used a big health potion and Skronk’s own mana was dwindling.

You know when the healer asks you about the cool down on your health potion that there might be an issue.

Skronk alerted Moronae that he might have to drop out of cat form and throw me some heals.  Morgaine was down to the end of his hit points, but my own health bar was marching down at a steady clip as well and no heals were incoming.

Fortunately we were putting out enough damage that Moragine one the race… or lost the race… to the end of our health bars and fell at our feet.  We had done it.

Our foes dead at our feet

And, as happens at these moments, there was some amount of surprise.  First, because we managed it a bit under-level as a group of four, then in the frame of the memory of how hard this fight was back in the day with a full group at a higher level.  We were bad back in the day.

It was time for some loot.

Morgaine gave us the Scarlet Leggings, mail pants which went to me.

They were a big upgrade, as I was still wearing mail that dropped back in Gnomeregan.

And Whitemane dropped the Hand of Righteousness, a one handed mace that is spec’d for a healing paladin I would imagine, but which was such an upgrade in DPS over my current sword that it went to me.

So I made out pretty well with the blue gear.  That said, Skronk might have gotten the most coveted item that dropped.  A trash mob had a 12 slot bag on its corpse.  A 12 slot bag!

I am sure he would have traded that for Whitemane’s chapeau, but still it was a good drop and a reminder of how inventory constrained we all are.  To this day I remember how overjoyed I was at one time back in vanilla when I got a 16 slot bag dropped.  That was a minor miracle.

We made it.

Now we just have to do it again once people get that Scarlet Monastery quest I mentioned above and to get another shot at Whitemane’s chapeau.  Also, I wouldn’t mind Morgaine’s shield, as that would be a serious upgrade for me.

Done with our task, we stood on the altar for one last screen shot of us all stoning home.

The group exiting

Ula has been at it again and has a video up of our run through the cathedral that covers the high points and aligns with a number of my screen shots.

There is even a very brief post-credits clip from the Bulwark part of our run.  She managed to get her video capture turned on to record the last few seconds of a spider and a bear on her as she was trapped in that pocked in the fence before they killed her.

You can comment on the video over at Ula’s blog, where it was posted initially.